Those Eyes
by LoveFromShinola
Summary: Based on Bleak House 2005 miniseries. When Nemo bumps into Esther on the street, what is he thinking when he looks on her eyes, so like that woman he's tried so hard to forget?


**AN:**

**Okay, so I LOVE the 2005 BBC adaptation of Bleak House, which is what I'm **_**solely **_**basing this on. This is based on a little moment in the first few minutes of the first episode, in which Esther bumps into Nemo/Captain Hawdon on the street and there are a few seconds in which he just stares at her. **

Lost in thought, he didn't notice her coming until he collided with her. He heard her groan, as if distant, but it was the harsh intruding voice of her companion that brought him back to earth.

'Have a care there, Sir!'

'Oh, I do beg your pardon. I beg your pardon.' He stammered, ghosting her movements with his hands as she straightened and smiled. 'Are you alright?' he asked mechanically, far too hypnotised to think all that clearly.

'Quite alright, thank you.' She answered, but he barely heard her.

All he saw were those eyes.

Those bright blue eyes, like the clearest of seas, that could display every emotion mankind had ever known. Those eyes. He knew those eyes. He hadn't seen them in twenty years, but he guessed he still knew them better than his own. He'd loved those eyes more than any in the world, no matter what emotion flitted through them. He'd seen them glimmer with happiness, seen them spark with anger, and seen them drenched in sorrow. And yet they had always been the most beautiful of eyes. He still dreamt about them. Them, and their owner, that woman he'd lost so long ago.

It had been the greatest moment of his life, when a lady like her had loved him. He'd been happier than he ever thought he could be, happier than he'd ever known happy stretched to. For a brief few days, he'd seen the life he'd wanted for himself, with her by his side. Then, a summons and a call, and the West Indies were his future and any one with her was uncertain.

She'd cried herself to sleep that night, or tried to. But, with the threat of death making him brazen, he'd been rasher than he'd ever been before. He'd kissed away her tears, whispered sweet nothings, done everything a man in love is supposed to do in times of hardship. That night, he'd lain with her, the first woman he'd ever lain with, and no time after, when he'd been lost in opium hazes, had ever compared.

Sailing away the next morning with the regiment, he'd felt her hands and lips and the brush of her hair on his cheek as vividly as if she were still there beside him. Soon, only her letters, those fragments of bliss in a war torn world, had kept him from thinking it had all been a dream. He'd awaited them eagerly, devoured them, read them over and over again and kept each one in the pocket of his ragged old coat. _If I die, _he thought, on the nights he allowed himself to think such things, _I want them to find these. I want them to know I was loved by a woman like her._

One night, one dreadful night, his regiment had been bombarded. Their ship sank off the coast of some godforsaken island, and he, with the rest, tossed to the unforgiving shore. He'd called himself coward as he saw the bodies of his comrades, smelling and heaped in the heat and the dust. There was no way to get back. Any English soldier, any naval fleet, had long since fled for home, to regroup, to plan, to report. He was stranded and knew without doubt he would be pronounced dead. A new zeal had gripped him. Honoria, Honoria, an odd name he'd called it, but now it was all he could think. He had to get back. He had to find her, before news of his 'death' came first.

He'd been a stowaway; he'd traded his jacket, his boots, anything he could, for a ride here or there, a scrap of food, a drink of water or something stronger. Anything to sustain him until his feet hit home again. It had taken him longer than he'd ever imagined, but he'd reached the countryside of England at last, clothes filthy and loose-fitting. He'd imagined, sleeping in barns and under trees when he was too exhausted to walk anymore, what it would be like when he saw her again.

He'd arrived at the Barbary house and knocked at the great oak door and was surprised to see not a butler or a valet or even a maid, but Honoria's sister herself, the sour-faced old trout, open it to him. The shock in her eyes flashed for only a second, but he saw it. _Oh God, she thought I was dead. That means…_

He'd bombarded her with questions, but she'd simply stood there, frozen on her own doorstep until at last she spoke:

'You've wasted a journey.' She spat more than she said and his heart dropped to his feet. She looked at him and in her eyes he saw no sorrow, only cold, hardness. He'd fleetingly mused, filled with confusion, that she should be married by now. There was no ring on her finger. Had Boythorn given her up? Or had…

'She's dead.' His thoughts came to such a sudden halt that his head reeled. He'd never been one to show emotion. Not to anyone but…her. But at that moment every moral or scruple he'd ever had fell flat and as the tears cascaded down his face and he stood dumbstruck, she didn't take the time to say sorry. She slammed the door in his face and he knew if he knocked again, she'd never answer.

Honoria was dead. What more did he need to know? Not thinking, he stumbled down the path and collapsed under a cluster of trees, fighting for breath, curled in on himself, keening quietly, animal noises he'd never known he was capable of making. If she was gone, what was there anymore?

Somehow, he'd made it to the capital. He'd filched some money from an unattended stall and spent it all on opium. In the haze, he saw her face again and he could pretend she was there, waiting for him, with him…alive. He'd become addicted to it as his only way of being certain he would find her. Even in dreams, sometimes she didn't come. Nightmares instead plagued him, of her dying by the hand of some unknown illness, calling for him and he unable to answer.

In time, he became a functioning wreck of a man. He even began to hear things again, where before he had been deaf to the world. Honoria's old suitor, that stuffy old Dedlock, had found himself a wife, according to the ever chattering fountain of knowledge, Mrs Snagsby. He'd halted when he'd heard it and almost, uncharacteristic now, chuckled to himself. _She couldn't have meant that much to him, in the end._ He'd tried in vain to scour graves for a marker, but he had no idea where to begin. All the local places near her home were devoid. Perhaps she was in the grounds? He'd never known.

And now, here before him, stood this girl with her cerulean eyes and her curious face and he couldn't take his own gaze away. He could feel her becoming uncomfortable, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't stop. This girl reminded him so much of _her_. How could he let her just walk away? But she wasn't her, James reminded himself. _She's young enough to be your daughter._ Greatly, tiredly and with a sigh, he uttered what he knew would be their parting words:

'No harm done then.' Pause. Silence. One last look. 'Good day to you.' She'd turned and even then he couldn't look away. Only Jo, poor, honest Jo, pulled him from his reverie. With a shake of his head, he tried to forget that plain of thought he wished would let him be, but of course he couldn't.

Until the day he died, his young fiancée and her unknown fate would haunt him. The woman that would have been his wife. The woman that would have born his children. The woman he couldn't live without.

**AN:**

**If you're wondering why I had Miss Barbary tell James that Honoria was dead, I just thought that was the only way Honoria would think he was dead, if he hadn't come looking for her because **_**he **_**thought **_**she **_**was dead. It was more romantic than him finding out she was married to Leicester and thinking she didn't love him anymore. Get it? No. Never mind. What did you think? Please review!**


End file.
